He could never have been satisfied with such a smug
phrase as 'the greatest happiness of the greatest number'. His mind
would have been eager for details. In what do the greatest number find
their happiness? How far is the happiness of one consistent with the
happiness of another? What difficulties and miscarriages attend the
business of transmuting the recognized materials for happiness into
living human joy? Even these questions he would not have been content to
handle in high philosophic fashion; he would have insisted on instances,
and would have subscribed to no code that is not carefully built out of
case-law. He knew that sanity is in the life of the senses; and that if
there are some philosophers who are not mad it is because they live a
double life, and have consolations and resources of which their books
tell you nothing. It is the part of their life which they do not think
it worth their while to mention that would have interested Shakespeare.
He loves to reduce things to their elements. 'Is man no more than this?'
says the old king on the heath, as he gazes on the naked madman.
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